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Our NewsletterIssue No. 32: The U.S. Is Developing Innovative Medicines in Abundance, to Fight Cancer and More
Oscar Wilde once defined a cynic as “a man who knows the price of everything and the value of nothing.” The same might be said for some who comment on the price of medicines. They often forget the value: the lives enhanced and saved. The year 2017 was “an extraordinary year in the history of medicine,” wroteBernard Munos, a senior fellow at FasterCures, a center of the Milken Institute. “It was the year when scientists beat cancer, and U.S regulators approved the first therapy to fix a faulty gene.” He continued: It was the year when scientists beat cancer, and U.S. regulators approved the first therapy to fix a faulty gene. It was also a year that kept us enthralled with a quickening drumbeat of breathtaking news detailing spectacular advances – trials seemingly curing patients of hemophilia A and sickle cell anemia, and breakthroughs raising similar hopes for Huntington’s disease, Lou Gehrig’s disease, and even HIV. Those aren’t the only breakthroughs last year. The FDA approved a new treatment for a specific form of Batten disease, a rare disease that can cause progressive neurological impairments and more treatments are under development by several companies. Munos writes, “What is remarkable about these successes is that they are not just lucky breaks, but the products of new technologies that are ushering us into a new therapeutic space of vastly expanded possibilities,” It appears that 2018 will continue the innovation hot streak. So far this year, the Food & Drug Administration (FDA) has approved 21 new drugs, and the pace seems to be accelerating – 12 were approved in the two-month span from mid-May to mid-July. In 2017, some 46 drugs were approved by the FDA’s Center for Drug Evaluation and Research (CDER), the most in over 20 years. Theaverage over the past 10 years has been 31 drug approvals. Read more here |
What Others Are Saying"The anger directed at the pharmaceutical and biotech industries overall is misdirected. The single biggest driving force for increased health-care spending in the U.S. is the rising cost of labor, not drugs." "Even if pharmaceutical spending were rising as a share of total health care spending, but that rise was due to pharmaceutical investments driving down expenditures in other health care areas (e.g. a reduced need for more expensive surgeries), then it would still be inaccurate to argue that pharmaceutical spending is driving overall health care inflation." |
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